


Queen of Swords

by Aesoleucian



Series: Gertrude Robinson's Extremely Temporary Home for Directionless Young Men [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Tarot, gertrude pov!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 07:15:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16614359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: A meditation on how to cut out your emotions like paper eyes but forget to actually take them out so they're just flapping around uselessly and you have to try and ignore them.





	Queen of Swords

After they disembark Gertrude leaves Gerard to his own devices. He takes this to mean that he should secure dinner for them both while Gertrude checks into the hotel. He’s too good at subservience for what he is, and certainly for what Gertrude is. She rather wishes he’d been able to beat it out of himself. She doesn’t like to think of him running errands for Mary. At least he manages stoicism where none of her assistants ever did; where neither of his parents could.

Gerard is so late finding the hotel that she considers going to a convenience store for food, but at nearly midnight he does knock on the door. “Sorry about this,” he says, a little breathless. “I had a hell of a time finding the place.”

He’s lying. Gertrude isn’t sure why.

They eat in silence, and immediately afterward Gerard disappears into the bathroom for a shower that lasts nearly an hour and ends with a gout of steam that rolls out into the room, waking her from her half-sleep. She gives no sign, but only listens to him tiptoeing around the room and sighing.

She wakes up early to have a miserable ‘continental’ breakfast in the hotel lobby, then leaves for the Institute without bothering to wake Gerard. He knows what his task is, and he’s showed good initiative and decision-making in the past. Gertrude needs to put in an appearance, if only to prove that she is still the Archivist, that she is not yet replaceable. She finds a totally unfamiliar set of assistants who look so shocked to see her that it’s quite possible they’ve only heard of her by reputation. She does not go to see Elias. It would be redundant. Rather, she fills her bag with relevant statements compiled by one or another of the assistants and leaves again for Soho. As she’s walking out the door Rosie asks timidly if she’ll be in to work tomorrow; “Perhaps,” says Gertrude.

At the occult shop off Dean Street she finds a young woman who must be an employee talking animatedly with Gerard about tarot. She barely glances up when Gertrude comes in, but Gerard straightens with a vaguely guilty air. She doesn’t even need to do anything to encourage his guilt—he spent over twenty years trying to understand how to please the impossible Mary Keay, and he was quick to attune himself to Gertrude in the same way. It irritates her for no reason she can fathom, despite how useful it makes him. No—for no reason she wants to fathom. Self-deception is an idiot’s tool, and yet Gertrude sometimes finds herself making use of it for the sake of expediency.

“Dekker’s in the back,” Gerard says. “Didn’t want to start without you. I can go and get him if you want.”

“No need. There’s no reason for you to be there. Continue with your games.”

She can feel his sullen irritation burning on the back of her neck as she opens the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and slips through. Good. If only he could bring himself to trust her a little bit less: he still thinks he’s somehow different from the assistants she has sacrificed to the hungry mouth of necessity. It always sickens her a bit to betray trust, but when she has to betray him it’s going to be—worse.

Dekker is taking notes on something he’s reading in the storage room. He looks up and smiles at her, and stands to clasp her hand. “Good to see you made it back in one piece.”

“Yes, well, for however long it lasts.”

His smile turns sardonic as he sits again. “Right. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about.” He slides a piece of blank paper and a pen across the table toward her. She only has to wonder why for a moment before he picks up his own pen and starts drawing a chaotic fractal (spiraling, angular) with no obvious algorithmic origin. Gertrude follows suit with one of her own. She’s now forgotten the name but the thing itself is strikingly memorable, rising and falling, weaving and unweaving itself until every part of it meets in a hungry plexus. She’s drawn it so many times that she sometimes dreams it making itself step by step, a netting in front of the monstrous eye that always watches her.

“This is what I’ve found so far,” says Dekker, gesturing to an open folder in front of him. “Does the Archive in fact have nothing?”

Gertrude doesn’t yet look up from her drawing, because he has paused. “It does, in fact. I have come to believe that any statements taken on it were destroyed immediately. I myself have only taken two, which may mean that witnesses are systematically eliminated.”

“Systematically, but not completely. I’ll draw, you look.”

She puts her pen down to look over what’s in the folder. Three new statements concerning preparation and one concerning the substance of the Rite of the Watcher’s Crown. She skims them intently and nods. “Thank you, Adelard. I should mark the folder as well, while we’re here. Do you have any other news?”

“Hmm,” says Dekker, as Gertrude begins to draw her fractal web on the folder. “No supernatural news. And I’m sure you don’t want to see pictures of my sister’s kids. Very cute, though. Sometimes she brings them in to visit, Paulina dotes on them. I think Gina’s afraid they’ll grow up into witches, though, if they keep playing with cards and crystals.”

Gertrude doesn’t speak or look up. She has nothing to say on the subject. It’s been decades since she had anything she could call a family. This is intentional.

“So I tell her she doesn’t have to bring them here, but she says they love the shop. Spoiled kids.”

Dekker lapses into silence, idly continuing his sharp spirals. She thinks of warning him not to get comfortable drawing fractals without thinking, but he’s a grown man. And in any case she doesn’t need associates who can’t take care of themselves. Getting rid of Michael was practically a public service—

She stops for a moment, caught between human decency and practiced cruelty. In any reasonable value scheme, Michael was worth nothing as a person, _less_ than nothing as a research assistant, and his only value was his ability to get in the way. But a very long time ago Gertrude was taught a different value scheme. Her parents insisted that humans have some kind of inherent worth, and she has been unlearning it ever since. Sometimes she wonders in her father’s voice why she should bother rescuing humanity from its collective fears if all of them are worthless, and she has never found a satisfactory answer. Only that it is something she needs to do.

She finishes the net and stands up, tucking the folder into her bag. “Thank you,” she says again. “Be careful.”

To her relief he puts his pen down as he smiles wryly up at her. “You need that advice more than me, Gertrude. Get on with you.”

He accompanies her out into the shop and looks over the girl’s shoulder where she’s leaning over one of the display cases. “Making friends, Paulina?”

“Shit!” she says, jumping slightly. “Hey, Mr. Dekker. I was just showing Gerry how to read tarot.”

_Gerry?_

Gertrude raises one eyebrow at him, but he is industriously tapping the deck on the table to align all the edges of the cards. She does not point out that Gerard has known how to read tarot since he was very young. Heaven forbid she should interfere with his _flirting_.

“I’d like to do a reading for you,” Gerard says. He looks up and makes eye contact, which seems to indicate that this request is important.

“I won’t stop you,” she says.

He shuffles seven times, flamboyantly, and then holds out the deck. She cuts it and he squares the edges on the table again.

When he draws the first card she realizes that the deck is not the Rider-Waite-Smith deck she was expecting. The angel in the sky of Judgment is not a winged humanoid but a wheel of eyes, an ophan. “This is your major concern,” says Gerard. “I don’t have to tell you what that means, do I.”

“No.”

“Your challenges,” says Gerard, flipping the next card. “Eight of cups. Detachment, abandonment of connections. G-d, this is a lot more embarrassing than I was expecting. Er, also symbolizes escapism. So, moving on. Something you need to know. Four of coins, reversed. Normally that means… huh. Material wealth…” For her the card appears upright, and it’s impossible to deny the subject’s striking resemblance to Elias Bouchard. “The crown is… literal. So maybe look for that. And don’t be shy about spending resources to go after it, I guess.”

Gertrude leans forward intently. “Where is it?” she asks. Although as far as she knows tarot is complete nonsense based in apophenia and confirmation bias, she is willing to believe that if anyone can use it for genuine divination it is Gerard.

“Right, this one’s ‘a thing you need in order to progress’.” He pushes the next card into place. “Hah! Oh, I like this deck. I’m sure you’re aware the Devil is usually a metaphor for imprisonment, but in this case he’s also a person.”

“Elias has the crown?”

“No,” says Paulina. Gerard looks around at her in surprise. “Not yet. It’s going to become his, or become real. That’s why it’s reversed. It doesn’t just show who has it, it shows how he has it. And he’s got to do something first.”

“Oh,” says Gerard. “Right, yeah, that makes sense. Pity, though, that we can’t steal it.” Gertrude gestures for him to continue, and he sighs. “Final card. What you’ve got to do.” He places it below the second card. “Four of cups. Play it safe. Wait.”

“No,” says Gertrude, and she flips the next card off the top of the deck, laying it sideways across the four of cups.

He sighs again, longer. “What you’re going to do anyway. Ace of swords. Reveal secrets at any cost.”

“That is a card for how to fail,” says Paulina.

“I have everything I needed,” says Gertrude. “Good-bye, Adelard.” She strides toward the door. Behind her Gerard hastily says goodbye to Paulina, muttering that she should text him, and hurries after Gertrude. Briefly, and for no reason at all, she hates him for assuming that he is required to leave with her.

Gerard catches up to her quickly, but as he often does he walks half a step behind. “She actually did teach me,” he says. “M… Mary never worked out how to use it for anything, she just liked the look of it. Apparently it gives you awful dreams, though. So, looking forward to that.”

“How unfortunate,” says Gertrude. “Especially as I suspect you’ll be using it a lot in the near future.”

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  this is a uh sweep of a logistic function [f(n+1) = a*f(n)*(1-f(n))] showing settling points for a bunch of values of the parameter a.


End file.
